Rehe am Bach von Plaisir-Fontaine

Courbet was used to scandal at the Paris Salon, but the one he sent in 1866, this forest scene of roe deer gathered at a stream, was a genuine hit, admired and quickly sold. The place is real. The Plaisir-Fontaine brook runs through the wooded country near Ornans, where Courbet grew up and where he hunted. He knew these animals as quarry, and painted them at their quiet watering spot rather than in flight, big as life on a canvas nearly two meters wide. There is no story here, no moral, no myth. Just wet rock, cool light through the trees, and a few deer at the ford who seem entirely unaware they are being looked at.